C Wadey (Letters, October 4) asked where my God was on September 11 and during the Vietnam, Korean and Second World Wars.

Let me answer by telling a true story which came from the Nazi concentration camps. One day, a Jewish inmate was hanged before his fellow prisoners for stealing a piece of bread.

As the poor man's body swung from the gallows, a voice cried out from the crowd: "Where is God now?" A rabbi who was also a prisoner replied: "He's up there with that man on the gallows."

My God was there in the midst of the carnage that was New York on September 11, sharing with those people in their suffering. It was the sin and wickedness of mankind that caused the New York atrocity and the wars, not God.

Communism slaughtered millions of innocent people in its endeavour to build a paradise here on Earth, whereas it is only the lunatic fringe of religions - whether they be Catholic, Protestant, Muslim or Jewish - who believe you have to be a mass murderer to enter paradise.

It is a remarkable thing people did not turn to atheism in despair at the awful atrocities which happened in the US but, all over the world, they turned to God in prayer.

God does not always work by performing spectacular miracles of deliverance, but has a wonderful way of bringing good out of evil.

-Reverend John Webster, Gleton Avenue, Hove